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J. M. Barbalet
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© J. M. Barbalet 1998
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Introduction 1
1 Emotion in social life and social theory 8
2 Emotion and rationality 29
3 Class and resentment 62
4 Action and confidence 82
5 Conformity and shame 103
6 Rights, resentment, and vengefulness 126
7 Fear and change 149
Epilogue 170
References 192
Index 207
vii
1 Emotion in social life and social theory
8
Emotion in social life and social theory 9
personal and intimate side of emotion than its collective or social dimen-
sion. Nevertheless, it has been shown by anthropologists, historians, and
sociologists, that the patterns of emotional experiences are different in
different societies. In this sense emotion can be regarded as an outcome
or effect of social processes. As a social product, emotion is in principle
amenable to sociological examination and explanation. There is in fact a
large and growing literature which shows, from a number of different per-
spectives, that emotion is a social thing (Kemper 1991; McCarthy 1989).
There is another answer to the question, “What is sociology’s business
with emotion?” Sociology might be concerned with emotion because
emotion is somehow necessary to explain the very fundamentals of social
behavior. This idea, that emotion is a social cause, is more likely to be
resisted by sociologists than the idea that it is a social effect. As this is the
more difficult to accept of the two answers concerning sociology’s busi-
ness with emotion, it is the one that we shall focus on here. The only good
reason to offer a sociological explanation of emotion is if emotion is itself
significant in the constitution of social relationships, institutions, and
processes.
Resistance to the idea of a causal capacity of emotion in social life and
social processes follows fairly directly from the present state of sociology
itself. This claim is by no means exaggerated, as a brief summary of the
structure of sociology will demonstrate. It is necessary, therefore, to
diverge into a discussion of sociology and its variant forms, which exclude
consideration of emotion. In examining the quality of their deficit we will
better appreciate the important role emotion might play in reconstituted
sociological explanations.
Sociology, unlike academic history, for instance, is committed to the
possibility of general explanation. But, unlike academic economics, say,
sociology does not operate within a single unifying paradigm. While
agreeing on the necessity to go beyond description, sociologists are likely
to disagree about the particular form of explanation which can take them
there. There is not one sociology; rather, there are many sociologies.
Drawing upon conceptualizations of varying breadth, we may count the
number of general types of sociological theory as five (Martindale 1961),
say, or four (Collins 1994), or three (Giddens 1971), or two (Dawe
1970). For our present purposes, the simplest approach is the best. Dawe
(1970) distinguishes between a sociology of social system and a sociology
of social action.
Accounts of social behavior which operate in terms of a sociology of
social system assume that factors which are external to social actors
determine what they do. Such accounts do not propose that external
forces simply compel actors to act. Rather, they offer two possibilities.
10 Emotion, social theory, and social structure
Romanticism
The application of general categories of intellectual and cultural develop-
ment to analyses of specific occurrences can be more misleading than
14 Emotion, social theory, and social structure
ment and aggression. For these intimate traits are of commercial rele-
vance and required for the more efficient and profitable distribution of
goods and services” ([1951] 1956, p. xvii). Rather than proceed to treat
these transactions for what they are, namely emotional exchanges in com-
mercial processes, Mills immediately slips into a discussion of the chang-
ing nature of rationality. He reports that the locus of rationality has shifted
from individual persons to bureaucratic social institutions. The implica-
tion is that commodified emotions and emotion management are ipso
facto within the domain of irrationality. The hegemonic intellectual cate-
gories of the day therefore take Mills away from an exploration of the
nature of emotion in organization and instead to a misdirected discussion
about the highly abstract category of rationality.
Other writers also used emotions categories during what might be
called the non-emotions period of sociology. Neil Smelser (1959), for
instance, was able to develop a theoretical account of social change
through an unacknowledged abandonment of the functionalist theory he
claimed to be developing and by drawing instead upon an argument con-
cerning the consequences for social relations of what he calls “negative
emotional reactions.” As the character of this part of Smelser’s argument
was unacknowledged by its author, so it was unnoticed by his readers. In a
similar way, Alvin Gouldner (1955, p. 498) outlined a discerning insight
on the emotional basis of the ascendence of theories. His argument was to
be more fully developed fifteen years later (Gouldner 1970), but still too
early for his readers at least to realize that an important statement con-
cerning the significance of emotion in theoretical development was being
presented.
More forthright than any of the work referred to so far is Erving
Goffman’s article on “Embarrassment and Social Organization” (1956).
Goffman shows that “embarrassment is not an irrational impulse break-
ing through socially prescribed behavior but part of this orderly behavior
itself” (1956, p. 271). Indeed, at a time when sociology was most commit-
ted to exploring the calculative possibilities of organization (Blau 1955;
Gouldner 1954; Merton [1940] 1968; Parsons 1956; Selznick 1948)
Goffman was able to show that a sustaining mechanism of organization is
not only formal rationality or the interest articulation of bureaucrats, but
the emotional process of embarrassment. Goffman’s is a most explicit
characterization of the significance of an emotion in social processes. This
major affront to the dominant focus of the sociology of the day was
mounted from the psychiatric wards of Bethesda, where Goffman con-
ducted research in the early 1950s.
Some writers, then, did acknowledge the significance of emotion as an
explanatory variable in sociology, if not always consistently. But they were
20 Emotion, social theory, and social structure
tions but displace them, as when love turns to hate. It is also possible that
through relational changes there may arise an emotion of emotionless-
ness. One form of this is depression, another is what Georg Simmel, in his
discussion of “The Metropolis and Mental Life” ([1903] 1971), has
called the blasé feeling. We shall have more to say about this in the follow-
ing chapter.
There are other problems with the constructionist approach to emo-
tions. Socially constructed emotions are given cultural labels or names;
but the absence of a word for an emotion does not mean that an emotion
is not experienced and behaviorally influential (de Rivera 1977, p. 128;
Ortony, Clore, and Collins [1988] 1990, p. 8; Russell 1991, p. 445).
Indeed, Thomas Scheff (1988) has shown that socially efficacious emo-
tions are likely to be experienced below the threshold of awareness, ren-
dering emotion work in the constructionist sense an unlikely prospect for
socially significant sets of emotions.
In addition to defining what terms refer to, the constructionist defer-
ence to culture (mis)defines what are in fact particular emotions. The
constructionist conception of emotion, by incorporating the explanans of
the theory (culture) in the definition of the explanandum (emotion), can
at best offer descriptions of emotions, rather than explanations of them
(MacKinnon 1994, p. 124), and only descriptions of those emotions
which are socially represented in the prevailing culture. Constructionism,
therefore, is not simply an account of cultural processes, it is itself captive
of cultural preferences.
This last point is frequently overlooked in critical discussions of
constructionism, even though it may be the most important. The social
representation of emotion is taken to be what emotion is in any given
social order. But social representations are necessarily distorted and
incomplete images (see Farr and Moscovici 1984; Ichheiser 1949). For
instance, the representation of emotion under conditions of market
capitalism and instrumental rationality ignores precisely the background
emotions which are continuous with the operations of the pervasive social
institutions, as we shall see in the following chapter. In our day-to-day
experiences, therefore, we tend to ignore those emotions which the pre-
vailing cultural conventions do not designate as “emotions.” The
constructionist approach cannot assist us in uncovering those emotions
which are crucial to social processes, such as implicit trust, or bypassed
shame, when they are not given social representation in the prevailing
culture, along with love and hate, for instance, as emotions.
Much attention has been given to culture by sociologists over the past
decade or more. And some researchers have understood emotion to be
primarily an aspect or element of culture (McCarthy 1994). But there are
Emotion in social life and social theory 25
to avoid his boss, or approach him or her with caution, for these behaviors
are typical of people who experience fear. We would expect Ann to
remonstrate with her sister, or to strike out against her in some way, for
this is often what angry people do. This is to say that particular emotions
dispose persons to commensurate types of action.
The approach indicated in the preceding paragraph suggests that not
cultural rules but primarily the structural properties of social interactions
determine emotional experiences, and that particular emotional experi-
ences determine inclinations to certain courses of action. Culture plays a
role, certainly, in the details but not the gross character of an actor’s
response to their circumstances. The point to be made here, though, is
that emotion is a necessary link between social structure and social actor.
The connection is never mechanical, because emotions are normally not
behaviorally compelling but inclining (see McDougall [1908] 1948, p.
384). But without the emotions category, accounts of situated actions
would be fragmented and incomplete. Emotion is provoked by circum-
stances and is experienced as transformation of dispositions to act. It is
through the subject’s active exchange with others that emotional experi-
ence is both stimulated in the actor and orientating of their conduct.
Emotion is directly implicated in the actors’ transformation of their cir-
cumstances, as well as the circumstances’ transformation of the actors’
disposition to act.
This is the view of emotion taken in the chapters which follow. An early
expression of such an approach was developed by Adam Smith in The
Theory of Moral Sentiments ([1759] 1982). Smith acknowledged the
novelty of his own approach when he implicitly criticized David Hume,
who held that a passion is an “original existence” and has “no reference to
any other object” (Hume [1740] 1911, p. 127). Smith, on the other hand,
said that:
Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of affections, and
have given little attention to the relation which they stand in to the cause which
excites them. In common life, however, when we judge of any person’s conduct,
and of the sentiments which directed it, we constantly consider them under both
these aspects. (Smith [1759] 1982, p. 18, emphasis added)
That emotions have both antecedents and objects or consequences was
also clear to Aristotle. In discussing anger, for instance, he said that emo-
tions (or “affections”) must be “divided under three heads . . . the disposi-
tion of mind which makes men angry, the persons with whom they are
usually angry, and the occasions which give rise to anger” (Aristotle [c.
330 ] 1975, p. 173).
In modern sociology the most sustained, developed, and comprehen-
sive presentation of this form of argument is Theodore Kemper’s A Social
28 Emotion, social theory, and social structure